Harvey Mansion — the elderly ghost of New Bern, North Carolina

The Harvey Mansion Historic Inn and Restaurant in New Bern, North Carolina, is housed in a building dating to the late 18th century, making it one of the oldest surviving structures in this historic colonial capital. The mansion has served as a private residence, a boarding house, and now an inn and restaurant. Staff and guests have reported the presence of an elderly man who appears in the dining rooms and hallways, dressed in clothing from the 1800s. He is described as a distinguished-looking gentleman with white hair who seems to observe the restaurant's operations with a proprietary air before fading from view. Waitstaff have described feeling someone watching them from an empty corner of the dining room, and place settings have been found rearranged at tables where no one has been seated. On the upper floors, where the inn's guest rooms are located, visitors have reported hearing the creak of a rocking chair in motion, the scent of tobacco pipe smoke, and cold spots that appear and disappear in the hallways. New Bern, founded in 1710, has a rich collection of ghost stories connected to its colonial and Civil War history, and the Harvey Mansion is considered one of the city's most reliably haunted locations.